On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s <i>The Death of the Heart</i>

Guifen Jiang

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

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On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart

Guifen Jiang

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 7, Issue 5)

Received: 16 August 2019 Accepted: 19 September 2019 Published: 9 October 2019

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Abstract

Elizabeth Bowen was one of the few truly accomplished Irish women novelists and one of the most distinguished writers of her time during which she was born and lived with the Anglo-Irish naïve dignity and tragedy with the class declining and becoming insignificant. Through the reading of her representative “coming-of age” novel The Death of the Heart produced in the interwar period, the readers can perceive the influence of Bowen’s childhood experiences on her creation and her major Anglo-Irish religious and philosophical views of life. The purpose of this article is to focus on its circular structure that parallels the structure of the myth of the Fall, in which the heroine Portia is portraited as a Christlike figure who develops from an innocent and ignorant girl belonging to nowhere to an integrated and conscious individual after experiencing betrayal and the death of the heart’s innocence. By means of an ingenious manipulation of its circular structure and the portrayal of the Christlike figure Portia, Elizabeth Bowen demonstrates her lifetime of continual “shuttling between England and Ireland”, witnessing alternative conflict and compromise between England and Ireland, and her Anglo-Irish religious outlook of predeterminism: let it be and accept it as it is.

Published in	International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 7, Issue 5)
DOI	10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
Page(s)	118-125
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Circular Structure, Portia, The World, The Flesh, The Devil, Anglo-Irish

References

[1]	Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.
[2]	Blodgett, Harriet. Patterns of Reality: Elizabeth Bowen’s Novels. Paris: Mouton, 1975.
[3]	Bronfenbrenner, Urie. “Freudian Theories of Identification and Their Derivatives.” Child Development, vol. 31, no. 1, 1960, pp. 15–40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1126378.
[4]	Bixby, Patrick. 'Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett by Nels Pearson', Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 63/no. 2, (2017), pp. 220-227.
[5]	Fahlbusch, Erwin. The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 4, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005.
[6]	Gornick, Vivian. 'Elizabeth Bowen in Love', Raritan: A Quarterly Review, vol. 37/no. 2, (2017), pp. 109-156.
[7]	Hollis, D. W. The History of Ireland. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001
[8]	. Ingman, H., Ó Gallchoir, C. A History of Modern Irish Women's Literature. Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
[9]	Kenney, E. J. Elizabeth Bowen. London: Associated University Presses, 1975.
[10]	Kuiper, Kathleen. The Death of the Heart, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 22 Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/The-Death-of-the-Heart. Accessed 4 Ju. 2019.
[11]	Kellman, Steven G. ‘The Death of the Heart-Summary’ Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical Edition Ed. eNotes.com, Inc. 2009, www.enotes.com/topics/death-heart#summary-summary-summary-the-work. Accessed 4 Jul. 2019
[12]	Lassner, P. Women Writers: Elizabeth Bowen. London: MacMillan Education ltd, 1990.
[13]	McDowell, Frederick P. W. ‘Elizabeth Bowen’s The Little Girls’, Critique, VII, (Spring, 1964), 139-143.
[14]	McKewan, Jaclyn. “Predeterminism”. In H. James Birx" (ed.). Encyclopedia of Time: Science, Philosophy, Theology, & Culture, 2009. SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 1035–1036.
[15]	Teekell, Anna. 'The Orphan Decade: Elizabeth Bowen’s 1930s Novels', Études Irlandaises, no. 42-2, (2017), pp. 139-151.
[16]	Van Duyn, M. ‘Pattern and Pilgrimage: A Reading of The Death of the Heart’, Critique, IV (Spring-Summer, 1961), 52-56.
[17]	Wang, Yena. 'The Landscape Representation of the Anglo-Irish Cultural Estrangements in Bowen's the Last September', Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 8/no. 8, (2018), pp. 1029-1034.

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APA Style

Guifen Jiang. (2019). On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 7(5), 118-125. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

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ACS Style

Guifen Jiang. On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2019, 7(5), 118-125. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

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AMA Style

Guifen Jiang. On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. Int J Lit Arts. 2019;7(5):118-125. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

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@article{10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15,
  author = {Guifen Jiang},
  title = {On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart},
  journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
  volume = {7},
  number = {5},
  pages = {118-125},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20190705.15},
  abstract = {Elizabeth Bowen was one of the few truly accomplished Irish women novelists and one of the most distinguished writers of her time during which she was born and lived with the Anglo-Irish naïve dignity and tragedy with the class declining and becoming insignificant. Through the reading of her representative “coming-of age” novel The Death of the Heart produced in the interwar period, the readers can perceive the influence of Bowen’s childhood experiences on her creation and her major Anglo-Irish religious and philosophical views of life. The purpose of this article is to focus on its circular structure that parallels the structure of the myth of the Fall, in which the heroine Portia is portraited as a Christlike figure who develops from an innocent and ignorant girl belonging to nowhere to an integrated and conscious individual after experiencing betrayal and the death of the heart’s innocence. By means of an ingenious manipulation of its circular structure and the portrayal of the Christlike figure Portia, Elizabeth Bowen demonstrates her lifetime of continual “shuttling between England and Ireland”, witnessing alternative conflict and compromise between England and Ireland, and her Anglo-Irish religious outlook of predeterminism: let it be and accept it as it is.},
 year = {2019}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart
AU  - Guifen Jiang
Y1  - 2019/10/09
PY  - 2019
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
T2  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JF  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JO  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
SP  - 118
EP  - 125
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2331-057X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
AB  - Elizabeth Bowen was one of the few truly accomplished Irish women novelists and one of the most distinguished writers of her time during which she was born and lived with the Anglo-Irish naïve dignity and tragedy with the class declining and becoming insignificant. Through the reading of her representative “coming-of age” novel The Death of the Heart produced in the interwar period, the readers can perceive the influence of Bowen’s childhood experiences on her creation and her major Anglo-Irish religious and philosophical views of life. The purpose of this article is to focus on its circular structure that parallels the structure of the myth of the Fall, in which the heroine Portia is portraited as a Christlike figure who develops from an innocent and ignorant girl belonging to nowhere to an integrated and conscious individual after experiencing betrayal and the death of the heart’s innocence. By means of an ingenious manipulation of its circular structure and the portrayal of the Christlike figure Portia, Elizabeth Bowen demonstrates her lifetime of continual “shuttling between England and Ireland”, witnessing alternative conflict and compromise between England and Ireland, and her Anglo-Irish religious outlook of predeterminism: let it be and accept it as it is.
VL  - 7
IS  - 5
ER  -

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Author Information

Guifen Jiang

Department of English, East China Jiaotong University, Nanchang, China

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Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Guifen Jiang. (2019). On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 7(5), 118-125. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Guifen Jiang. On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2019, 7(5), 118-125. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

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AMA Style

Guifen Jiang. On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart. Int J Lit Arts. 2019;7(5):118-125. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15,
  author = {Guifen Jiang},
  title = {On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart},
  journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
  volume = {7},
  number = {5},
  pages = {118-125},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20190705.15},
  abstract = {Elizabeth Bowen was one of the few truly accomplished Irish women novelists and one of the most distinguished writers of her time during which she was born and lived with the Anglo-Irish naïve dignity and tragedy with the class declining and becoming insignificant. Through the reading of her representative “coming-of age” novel The Death of the Heart produced in the interwar period, the readers can perceive the influence of Bowen’s childhood experiences on her creation and her major Anglo-Irish religious and philosophical views of life. The purpose of this article is to focus on its circular structure that parallels the structure of the myth of the Fall, in which the heroine Portia is portraited as a Christlike figure who develops from an innocent and ignorant girl belonging to nowhere to an integrated and conscious individual after experiencing betrayal and the death of the heart’s innocence. By means of an ingenious manipulation of its circular structure and the portrayal of the Christlike figure Portia, Elizabeth Bowen demonstrates her lifetime of continual “shuttling between England and Ireland”, witnessing alternative conflict and compromise between England and Ireland, and her Anglo-Irish religious outlook of predeterminism: let it be and accept it as it is.},
 year = {2019}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - On the Circular Structure in Bowen’s The Death of the Heart
AU  - Guifen Jiang
Y1  - 2019/10/09
PY  - 2019
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
T2  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JF  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
JO  - International Journal of Literature and Arts
SP  - 118
EP  - 125
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2331-057X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190705.15
AB  - Elizabeth Bowen was one of the few truly accomplished Irish women novelists and one of the most distinguished writers of her time during which she was born and lived with the Anglo-Irish naïve dignity and tragedy with the class declining and becoming insignificant. Through the reading of her representative “coming-of age” novel The Death of the Heart produced in the interwar period, the readers can perceive the influence of Bowen’s childhood experiences on her creation and her major Anglo-Irish religious and philosophical views of life. The purpose of this article is to focus on its circular structure that parallels the structure of the myth of the Fall, in which the heroine Portia is portraited as a Christlike figure who develops from an innocent and ignorant girl belonging to nowhere to an integrated and conscious individual after experiencing betrayal and the death of the heart’s innocence. By means of an ingenious manipulation of its circular structure and the portrayal of the Christlike figure Portia, Elizabeth Bowen demonstrates her lifetime of continual “shuttling between England and Ireland”, witnessing alternative conflict and compromise between England and Ireland, and her Anglo-Irish religious outlook of predeterminism: let it be and accept it as it is.
VL  - 7
IS  - 5
ER  -

Copy | Download